It looks like we aren’t the only ones cutting back nowadays.
Will Smith revealed he is scaling back on his lifestyle and has entered into a new financial phase in a recent interview with Complex’s Speedy Norman.
“I’m in the downsized phase of my life,” Smith told Norman after being asked about his current relationship with money. “The first half of my life was gather, gather, gather, and the second half of my life is going to be give, give, give. You see people who will be rich and famous. They always have that moment somewhere around 50, where something changes.”
He went on to explain that he realized accumulating wealth loses priority over philanthropic efforts as they get older.
“Once you’ve bought everything you want, and there’s literally nothing on Earth else that you want to buy—I just wish that was a gift that everybody could have because there’s nothing that material can do to satisfy you,” the 55-year-old actor, entrepreneur and author said. “It’s like drinking saltwater. You’ll never get enough. You’re just going to make yourself more and more thirsty. So it’s like that. I’m in that phase of my life and that can actually be scary.”
This tracks, as 2022 research suggests that financial literacy typically peaks at age 54.
“As we get older, we seem to rely more on past experience, rules of thumb, and intuitive knowledge about which products or strategies are better,” says Rafal Chomik, an Australia-based economist in a 2023 essay.
Over the course of his decades-long storied career, it’s reported that Smith has built a net worth of more than $350M to which he says “he doesn’t know” if that number is actually accurate in the interview when asked to confirm.